The present invention relates to automatic recorders/duplicators for CD's and DVD's and more particularly to a disc duplicator that has a simple design with the components of the duplicator aligned with a disc picker and placement mechanism so drive movement of the disc picker and placement mechanism requires only one degree of freedom.
There exists a need for a simpler, efficient and low cost disc (CD) duplicator. There are many conventional disc duplicators available, but they are fairly expensive which prevents most casual users or low volume businesses from acquiring and utilizing one of these systems.
Conventional disc duplicators have pick and place picker mechanisms that usually have drives for both pivotal and linear motion due to the fact that the disc storage supports and the loading trays of conventional disc duplicators cannot be reached by the picker by just one motion. Therefore the picker mechanism is complicated, and other components of the conventional disc duplicator are not arranged in an efficient manner. Most of the complexity comes from the picker mechanism needing drives for having a substantial amount of linear motion in one degree of freedom to pick or drop a disc on a tall stack of discs found in conventional duplicators plus motion in other degrees or freedom to manipulate the disc between desired locations.